Since 1999 comedy group The Chaser have been “striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence” with their own unique yet occasionally controversial take on current affairs and popular culture. After attacking print, the airwaves and the internet they moved to TV most notably with War on Everything, an award-winning satire of confrontational stunts and sketches in the same vein as The Day Today or The Daily Show, which is truly high praise indeed.
The team – minus founding member Charles Firth – now returns for their third season, also rumoured to be the last.
Cronulla Sharks Sex Scandal done The Chaser Way
The first episode started with a humorous montage of mock adventures the boys have been keeping themselves busy with during the break such as Chas Licciardello living with monks in a Buddhist temple and Craig Reucassel travelling to Ethiopia to build a fence to keep Bono and Bob Geldof out. The voiceover then announced that was the end of the new material and it was back to the “same old sh*te”.
And that’s exactly what happened. But that’s not to say it’s a bad thing at all as The Chaser always finds something on its radar that needs to be taken down a peg or two. Immediately the Cronulla Sharks sex scandal, which has been back in the news recently, was a target prompting a series of skits based on older cases, ending with them flying a blimp over the Vatican with the words “young boys inside” written on the side. Unfortunately the security within the Catholic Church capital didn’t find it funny and the crew were questioned for eight hours.
The scandal reference was taken a step further when Julian Morrow later snuck into a Sharks game and announced over the stadium mic: “Can those people involved in the New Zealand group sex please report to the match day office so you can finally be identified." So thankfully the tone for this season has been set already.
Billy Connelly’s World Tour of Iraq and Ku Klux Klan Cancer Awareness
One highpoint of the programme was a sketch called Billy Connelly’s World Tour of Iraq, spoofing the Scottish comic’s tour shows – including a dead-on impression – as he walks through the middle of warzones, then being kidnapped by terrorists all the while being annoyingly enthusiastic and calling everything “brilliant”. Another saw the Ku Klux Klan wearing pink sheets to raise cancer awareness except for one grand dragon who was only dressed in pink because of a washing mishap, leading him to say it backs up the “stupidity of mixing colours with whites”.
A section that perhaps didn’t work too well was when the team tried to re-create ridiculous US lawsuits in order to make a quick buck. Although the examples used were topical (a man suing after being glued to a toilet seat Home Depot, for example) they were actually far funnier than The Chaser’s efforts to make light of them.
But despite a couple of weak sketches it was still a strong enough outing for the team, even though this season has actually been cut short to only 10 episodes apparently due to a lack of ideas. Hopefully the remaining shows haven’t been padded out with substandard sequences and the quality remains throughout.
The Chaser’s War on Everything is shown on ABC1 at 9pm every Wednesday.
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